“Say, Neville.”
Neville flinched and jumped. His wand slipped, and a jet of ink spurted across his Transfiguration essay as his inkwell shattered.
“Reparo, scourgify,” someone said quickly. The ink vanished, leaving a blessedly clean essay behind, and the inkwell repaired itself. Neville looked up into Harry Potter’s green eyes.
“Thanks,” he said. A blush warmed his cheeks. Damn it, why did Harry of all people have to have seen that? “Uh… oh, sorry, here, sit down.” Neville dragged his school bag off the chair next to him.
“Don’t worry about it, Neville, you were studying.” Harry leaned over Neville’s homework and Neville tried to remember how to breathe. It was embarrassing enough when anyone laughed at his work but if it was Harry, well, Neville might just die on the spot.
At least that would make Uncle Algie happy, he thought sourly, and then tried to bury the thought. It wasn’t a nice thing to think about family. Even if he really didn’t like being related to Uncle Algie.
“Not bad. This bit could use some work, here–the Softening Charm isn’t actually a charm, they just call it that.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Neville blinked a few times. It was still new when Harry or Theo or his other… dare he say friends?... helped with homework instead of just mocking him.
“No problem.”
“What’s up?” Neville said.
Harry grinned. He was, Neville thought, one of the most intimidating people in their year. Looking back, he was pretty sure Harry had been being unthreatening on purpose when they first met on the train, because there was nothing shy or uncertain about him generally. That was okay, though. He was a Slytherin, and good at relating to people, and he’d probably been trying not to scare Neville away. And it wasn’t as though Neville could ever blame Harry for deciding to befriend him. Harry was the first person who had ever decided, on his own, knowing nothing about Neville’s parents, that Neville was worth befriending.
“I found something,” Harry said. “You coming?”
Of course he was. Neville would have happily followed Harry into the Forbidden Forest if he’d asked.
It turned out, though, that he didn’t have to follow Harry anywhere unpleasant, only to the sixth floor of the gallery wing, where no one ever went. Neville’s eyes got huge when the wall slid aside, and even huger when he emerged from the hidden staircase into the coolest greenhouse he had ever seen.
“I found it when I was wandering the other night.” Harry tilted his head back. Neville thought, like this, in the dirt and strange green light, that Harry looked like something out of a fairy tale, a changeling that was almost but not quite human.
“Does… it belong to anyone?”
“Us, now.” Harry handed Neville a small book: Varieties and Uses of Restoration and Repair Charms. “Want to help me fix it up?”
“D’you have to ask?” Neville said.
-----
The Hufflepuff-Gryffindor match approached with all the fervor you’d expect from a lot of adolescents cooped up together with not a lot of supervision or entertainment. Harry did his best to ignore it, but even the library was far too often noisy and crowded, despite Madam Pince’s best efforts.
He snapped a week before the match when Granger and Weasley got into a shouting match and got themselves kicked out. “We’re leaving,” Harry said, slamming his book closed. “Come on.”
Gratifyingly, the others at his table–his usual group–followed without questioning it.
They’d all seen the greenhouse by now. Neville was already up there, as he was in pretty much every spare minute, and already rows of plants had been added to the end of the greenhouse nearest the clock towers, which was where the trapdoor let them out.
“Hey, guys!” Neville called as they filed up into the greenhouse. “Want to help?”
Portia wandered over to him with a shrug, but Harry shook his head and instead set about casting a series of charms at the dirt, shifting it away from the last five meters of the greenhouse. No plants were growing here yet, and the shadow of the clock tower lay half over the stone of the roof when Harry finally got the dirt all shoved into a pile next to the trapdoor.
“Making a study space here?” Zacharias looked around, squinting up at the sun and the newly-cleaned glass. Most of it was still filthy but Harry had helped Neville spend several hours using scourgifys and good old buckets of hot water and soap getting the glass clean down by this end.
“It’s quiet,” Harry said.
“And Dean can come,” Zacharias said. “Since up here no one would see him studying with Slytherins.”
This last bit was said with a sneer Malfoy would envy. Harry grimaced; the House rivalry really did get frustrating sometimes.
“I can see if I can find him,” Luna said. “Since I wouldn’t cause any wrackspurts.”
“Good idea.” Harry watched her leave her bag behind and vanish back down the secret passageway. After months of studying with the odd Ravenclaw, he still couldn’t figure out if her creatures were real, imaginary, or highly detailed delusions. No one else had ever heard of anything like a nargle or wrackspurt, but, well, magic was weird, and there were plenty of talents, like divination or Parseltongue, that some magicals had and most didn’t. Who knew what kinds of weird things hovered around on the edge of human perception?
“Shall we start hauling some furniture up here?” Theo said.
Zacharias nodded. “I know a temporary shrinking charm. It only lasts five minutes or so, and it won’t work on anything magical or much bigger than a table, but it’ll help.”
“Cool. Teach me?” Theo asked.
The two of them vanished as well, presumably to ransack the top few floors of their wing in search of forgotten furniture. Harry allowed himself a private smile as he set his bag down by the others and wandered over towards Neville and Portia.
Two sets of hands were buried in the earth, piling it high around the base of several tiny plants. “What’re you planting?” Harry asked.
“Fluxweed. It’s really useful, and it’s great for a greenhouse, keeps insects away,” Neville said. “I had my Gran send me some cuttings from home. I told her it was for an Herbology project.”
“That’s not actually a lie, technically,” Harry pointed out.
Portia snorted and Neville grinned up at him. “It’s not, is it?”
“I had an idea.” Harry eyed the dirt and squatted instead of sitting, so he could be at Neville’s eye level without getting his robes mucked up. He had too few sets of magical clothing to treat any of them carelessly.
“What now?” Portia said good-naturedly.
Neville elbowed her with a shocking lack of self-consciousness. Harry couldn’t remember seeing him so relaxed anywhere outside of this greenhouse, but here, all his insecurity seemed to vanish.
“I was thinking we could set up some sort of business selling potions ingredients,” Harry said. “Plenty of students brew in their spare time or need to replenish their kits or want something that’s not in the student store cupboard.”
“Or that they don’t want to explain what they need it for,” Portia added.
Harry smirked. “That too. What d’you think, Neville?”
The Hufflepuff looked a little stunned. “I–I don’t know… is that, you know, allowed?”
“Who cares?” Harry stretched his arms out. “We’re not stealing anything. The space was unused and plenty of students have their own improvised study spaces around Hogwarts. And if someone buys from us and brews something they shouldn’t, that’s not our fault.”
Neville shook his head. “I really would be a terrible Slytherin.”
“You would,” Portia said drily, as if the very idea amused her.
“I like it, though. If you’re sure,” Neville said uncertainly, looking up at Harry.
“Of course I’m sure. We can draw some sort of work rotation up, and split up the profits based on who’s done the most work,” Harry said. He fully intended to pocket a fair amount of the profit himself, especially if he could get some of the older Slytherins to buy from him. And he could easily undercut the prices of an owl-order apothecary.
“Wow… yeah, okay. I’d like that.” Neville had got a bit of a thoughtful glint in his eye that suggested he was already thinking about what he could get his hands on. “Professor Sprout lets me help out in the greenhouses… I could maybe ask for a cutting, or sneak some out? And Gran would send me more, I think, but not a lot more.”
“Why not?” Portia patted the last fluxweed cutting with a satisfied expression and sat back.
Neville flushed. “She doesn’t approve of gardening. Says I ought to be going into the Aurors, what with my parents and all. My parents tend to say the same, when they’re home, but… yeah.”
“If they can’t see how happy it makes you, that’s their problem,” Harry said. It was so easy. “And this is something real you can do with it. Proof you don’t have to go getting in fights with criminals all the time to do some good.”
That startled a laugh out of Neville, as he’d meant it to. Harry left them to fertilize the fluxweed and returned to the newly dirt-free end of the greenhouse just in time to help Theo and Zacharias arrange the furniture they’d found.
By the time Luna reappeared with Thomas in tow, along with Grader, they’d set up a fairly cozy little spot. There was one long table made of some dark wood that was soft to the touch from age, surrounded by a mismatched collection of eleven chairs. Theo had tracked down three squashy armchairs; each was set up with a small table next to it and a view of either the castle or the grounds. Zacharias was busy arranging books on two large bookshelves flanking the main table.
“Bloody hell,” Thomas said. “This is incredible, mate, how’d you think of it?”
Harry shrugged. “Got sick of the library and everyone being loud. Once the match is over, things will be quiet again, but I thought it would be nice to have our own place.”
“Brilliant,” Grader said fervently. “Can I go sit in one of those chairs?”
“Be my guest.”
She went for an armchair like a niffler after gold. Thomas laughed. “I love it. By the way, who all are we telling about this place?”
“So far it’s just everyone who’s here, and Kershaw, Fawley, Rowle, and Carran. Justin, too, once he wakes up.”
Thomas nodded and didn’t say what they both had to be thinking—that Justin might never wake up.
-----
...grown worse. The contaminant no longer responds to efforts to protect my organs quite as effectively as it once did. I fear, my precious godsdaughter, that you may be Viscountess Burke and Lady Rookwood before much longer.
Enclosed you will find something which may be of assistance to you should you find yourself dealing with the goblins before your majority. My affairs are in order: do not trouble yourself on that account. You are in school and until you graduate that is your only concern.
Should the worst come to pass, and should the Headmaster refuse you leave to visit my bedside, know this: raising you has been the greatest honor and delight an old man could imagine, and the sole light in a long and mostly unhappy life. Your father would be proud of who you have become. You are a credit to your Houses and to me. I want nothing but for you to be happy, safe, and fulfilled. Words cannot tell you, my godsdaughter, how dearly I love you.
The parchment was soft and creased from many days spent riding around in Deirdre’s robe pocket. She hated to admit it, but a few tear stains marked its surface, and they had not been there when she received it. Viscount Nile Burke had not been the crying type.
It was the last thing he would ever say to her, that letter. Just this morning Deirdre’s breakfast had been interrupted by a curt letter from the Burke family solicitor informing her that her godsfather and adopted father had died in his sleep.
Deirdre would never, ever forgive Headmaster Dumblefuck for refusing to let her visit her lifelong home. He will be fine, Dumblefuck had said, and your… father is a strong man, and it’s for the best, dear girl, he would not wish your studies to be interrupted. No matter that the oldest Weasleys had gotten a week off at a time whenever one of their endless and endlessly spoiled little siblings was born. No matter that Nile had been the only family Deirdre had in the whole world.
Probably she should be feeling something right now but Deirdre was just numb. Cold. Like a freezing spell had wrapped around her heart and swum through her arteries, driving out all human warmth and feeling. The others knew it, too. They’d all come in from the Hufflepuff-Gryffindor match talking about Diggory this and the Quaffle that but no one had gotten within ten feet of her.
That suited Deirdre fine. Her father, her Papa, was dead, and she knew who was to blame.
House arrest did not allow for visits to St. Mungo’s without approval from a Wizengamot-appointed magistrate, and all requests had been denied.
Deirdre had to set the letter aside so she didn’t accidentally crumple it in her fist or set it on fire.
Last summer, before she left, Nile had told her to find something that gripped her in her bones. “You will be unhappy all your life unless you find something that truly makes life worth living. For some, it is a person, a love that outshines all the stars. For others it is a cause.” He’d gripped her shoulders with hands that shook: in her first year, the curse-poison eating away at his body had finally gotten into his major muscles. “Deirdre, my daughter, I will be proud of you no matter what you do. If your cause is championing the rights of slobberworms, I would of course tell you my honest opinion–” here they both smiled, as Nile’s sharp tongue and willingness to use it had been infamous among his former social circles– “but I would love and support you just the same. Just find something. No one enjoys an empty life.”
Deirdre hadn’t known, back then, what her cause would be, although she’d been pretty sure it didn’t involve love. She was fourteen going on fifteen and most of her classmates had experimented with each other by now. Deirdre was no exception but she had not found kissing either girls or boys to be very satisfying. Romantic love, too, seemed sort of pointless and uninteresting. No, for her it would be a cause, and now she had one. She was going to rebuild House Burke and House Rookwood so that never again would either be laid low. No more Burkes or Rookwoods would ever die such an inglorious death.
Her eyes homed in on Carter Avery, sixth year and Deirdre’s bet for the top of the House next year. He was holding court across the common room with the only two people he really seemed to consider friends, Merula Snyde and Darius Barrow.
If she was going to rebuild her Houses, it would start here. And the way to ruling Slytherin House was to form a coalition.
Deirdre already felt fairly confident that she could connect with Avery’s lot. The trickier angle was the younger years. Typically, it would be a third year she looked to for support from that direction, but this was an unusual time. The current group of second years included the Heirs to Malfoy, Greengrass, Potter, Nott, Goyle, Zabini, and Parkinson. On top of that, Malfoy and Potter both had a claim to House Black, not that Potter seemed to have realized yet. Or maybe he was just playing his cards close. Who knew with that one.
Before the firsties had shown up, everyone expected Malfoy to be in charge of his year. With a mother like Narcissa, one of the Three Furies as she and her sisters had been nicknamed in school, how could the littlest Malfoy not be on top?
But then Potter threw water on all their carefully drawn runes. So far he didn’t have any strong in-House allegiances aside from Nott, but Deirdre wasn’t about to dismiss him over that. As a first year he had outwitted both Avery and Bulstrode in one move. Rumor had it he’d allied with the Heirs to Longbottom, Smith, and Lovegood as well, proving he was able to form broad coalitions with unexpected players. Cunning, charismatic, top of his year, not too proud to seek alliances—he was the epitome of Slytherin and Deirdre would eat her hat if he didn’t put little Malfoy in his place within a year or two.
It was a gamble, true. But her Papa’s words rang in her ears: nothing ventured, nothing gained. The bigger the risk, the larger your reward, he’d told her, over chess when she was very young.
It was time to take a risk.
-----
Harry stared at Graves and Luna. He shouldn’t have been surprised by this friendship, but somehow it had sneaked up on him. As had this request.
“Tissue samples,” he repeated, just to make sure he hadn’t misheard them.
Luna nodded. “We are trying to determine the cause of the comas.”
“And you think you can do better than the best healers in the country?”
“We can be more creative,” Graves said.
Well, and that was almost definitely true, so Harry didn’t press the point. “Fine. You don’t have an excuse to go in there, I take it?”
“Not to visit all of them, and we would need samples from all the attacked students to get an accurate result. Ideally we would kidnap them and run tests on them as they are but I expect that would cause too much of a fuss.” Graves looked far too excited about the idea of experimenting on his classmates.
Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay. You know what–sure. One of you–Luna–find a spell to extract blood without causing any damage. We can find someone to have some kind of ‘accident’ and the three of us can ‘find’ them and take them to the hospital wing. I’ll distract Pomfrey and you can go get your blood samples while she’s busy with whoever it is.”
“But someone will be hurt,” Luna said.
Graves, unsurprisingly, did not seem bothered by this. Harry did his best to give Luna a reassuring smile. “I promise it will be someone who deserves it, yes? Graves, you find something that Pomfrey can heal completely but that would take her a few minutes of consistent work to deal with. And also that a… fifth year might realistically have happen.”
“Strict criteria, but I’m sure I will find something suitable.”
Again, Harry thought Graves looked a little too happy about this, but he sent them off with a sigh. It wasn’t like he or any of his group would be hurt, and it would give Graves a bit of an outlet.
***
“Potter.”
Harry looked up.
Deirdre Rookwood stood over him with the air of a fierce icicle with a ponytail.
“Rookwood,” he greeted cautiously. They’d never really interacted after the showdown at the end of his first year. Did she need a favor? Just last week he had managed to steal some Dreamless Sleep from the hospital wing for a fifth year who had been having OWL-stress-induced nightmares. Maybe Rookwood had heard of that.
She sat down with little ceremony. He and Theo, plus Zabini who had joined them (ostensibly to pick Harry’s brain about their Potions essay), stared at her with the kind of blank patience that characterized Slytherins.
“I hear you and your… friends have been doing some extracurricular studies,” Rookwood said.
“Sometimes,” Harry said slowly. They broke a lot of rules and bent several more when they practiced Defense on and against each other. When it was just him and Theo, they bent the rules even more to study curses and spells not taught to second years. If Rookwood meant to blackmail him…
Apparently not. She had produced a book from somewhere, and Zabini’s eyes rose as they all read the cover. “That is a very valuable book,” he said.
Rookwood smiled. “Also illegal.”
“Trying to prove you can get illegal literature into the castle?” Harry said drily, although he itched to get his hands on it. The spells in that book were dark magic, blood magic, and it was widely considered the most comprehensive and thorough introduction to such magics published in English. It was also banned ten ways from Sunday and wildly hard to get hold of. Even the Notts didn’t have a copy.
“It’s a gift.”
Now Harry was even more baffled. “You shouldn’t have,” he said, while frantically trying to calculate what this meant, what was her angle—
“My father is dead. I am now the acting Head of Houses Burke and Rookwood. I can’t exactly have weak allies, now can I?”
“Allies?” Harry accepted the book but didn’t put it away, just weighing it in his hand as he weighed her… offer? “Is that what we are?”
Rookwood shrugged. “It could be. Unlike some,” she glanced pointedly towards where Perseus Bulstrode sat with some friends, “I don’t hold with antiquated ideas about blood. You’re clever and powerful and, frankly, I like you.”
“And in a year?” Theo said. “Or two, or three? What would this alliance mean to you then?”
“Any Slytherin worth their salt knows about building coalitions. And any coalition is built on trust and goodwill.” Rookwood nodded at the book. “Make no move against my Houses, and I will honor any agreement we make.”
“It’ll be a year or two before I can make such… binding commitments, you understand,” Harry said softly. He wasn’t the uncontested head of his year yet, nor old enough to count in Slytherin politics. Right now he was just a poor halfblood orphan with some important friends in other Houses. But in a few years…
A smile crawled across his face.
Rookwood nodded. “I do understand, but an informal arrangement is perfectly acceptable in the interim.”
“It might perhaps be best if others do not see a physical gesture sealing such a deal,” Zabini said in a voice of studied disinterest.
Harry looked at him, and Zabini shrugged. “Just making an observation, Potter.”
“He’s right.” Rookwood stood abruptly. “See if you can get your hands on something restricted for me this week. Potions ingredient or whatever, I don’t care, but that way people will think this was a simple trade of favors.”
Harry nodded; he could do that. And, if they were making gestures of faith… “Do let me know if you need anything difficult to acquire in general,” he said. “I would not want a weak ally either.”
Rookwood laughed softly. “You’ve got stones, Potter. Be seeing you.”
Theo turned on Zabini the second Rookwood walked away. “You’ll keep your mouth shut about what you just saw,” he said coldly, with a twist to his mouth that promised painful consequences if Zabini didn’t listen.
“I’m not an idiot,” Zabini said, visibly annoyed. Not many could be so unaffected by Theo at his nastiest. Harry was reluctantly impressed. “I can see which way the current flows.”
“And if the current changes direction?” Harry asked. At some point he’d begun twirling his wand around his fingers: Zabini’s eyes clung to the movement.
“Then I will simply have to fight the current,” he replied.
Theo smiled, and it was worse than when he had looked angry. “Good answer.”
Harry tilted his head. “Do try to uphold your oath. It’s easy to commit to fighting the current in a time when it flows with you.”
“My mother has had seven husbands in eleven years,” Zabini said, eyes flashing. “Unlike the popular rumor, she doesn’t kill them. I am no stranger to swimming against the current.”
Harry’s mind went temporarily blank with shock. Did Zabini kill his stepfathers? If so, why? And why would his mother keep remarrying?
“Well.” Theo’s smile was suddenly and disconcertingly cheerful. “You’re much more interesting than I thought. If you’re going to join our merry band of rejects from polite society, you’d better call me Theodore.”
“Blaise,” Zabini said, smiling thinly.
Harry nodded slowly. “And I hope you’ll call me Harry.”
An inroad within Slytherin. Two, actually, both established in the span of an evening. Harry was delighted by his progress.
***
“Ready?”
Harry nodded, mouth pressed thin.
Theo stood across from him, wand up. A stone levitated in front of him. Already Theo’s face was tight with strain.
He jerked his arm straight up, sending the stone flying through the air. Harry whipped his wand up, eyes never leaving the stone, aimed, “Bombarda!”
The spell clipped the edge of the stone. It exploded and sent a nasty spray of fragments in all directions plus one massive chunk that went straight through a window with a smash.
“Whoops,” Harry said gleefully. The heady rush of the magic was still coursing through him. Bombarda was the closest thing to a “Dark” spell offered at Hogwarts, and Rookwood’s book had recommended it as an introductory spell for someone studying deep magic. The author had also gone on a bit of a rant about how magic was magic and the monikers “dark” and “light” were both prejudiced and misleading, and haughtily insisted on calling spells “deep magic” if they tapped into more power than a basic charm or transfiguration. Deep magic was that which called on emotion or sacrifice, and while it was labeled Dark by the Ministry, it actually had once been equally used by both “Darke” and “Lyghte” wixen.
There was a lot of subtext he didn’t explain well, and that Harry really wanted to clarify, but he got the point: powerful magic was just that, magic, and studying it without caution could get you killed if you tried something you weren’t ready to control.
Theo, laughing, followed Harry to the window. They stuck their heads out: the stone had fallen harmlessly onto the grass bordering Hogwarts between the castle wall and Sprout’s greenhouses. Two redheads were squinting up at them.
“Merlin dammit, the Demons saw us,” Theo said dramatically.
Harry pulled his head back in and Theo followed suit. “We’ll be fine. They’re probably the least likely to tell a teacher of any students here.”
“True,” Theo said. “Want another go?”
Yes, but Harry felt strained from the practice they’d already done, and the book had been both graphic and vocal about the dangers of pushing too far. “I think I’ve had enough for today. We still have to work on charms tonight, remember?”
“Oh crap,” Theo sighed, “fine. I suppose I’ve had enough of blowing things up for today.”
They spelled the stone dust off their robes and turned to the door, only to find it open a small crack already.
Frowning, Harry whispered “protego” and held the shield as Theo flicked his wand to send the door flying open.
Zacharias Smith leaned against the wall opposite them, grinning like the kneazle that got the niffler.
Harry was across the hall with his wand jammed into Zacharias’ gut before the tall Hufflepuff could blink.
“Easy,” Zacharias said. His wide eyes didn’t quite match his calm tone of voice. “I’m not about to tattle, you know. Hufflepuff loyalty and whatnot.”
“Then why were you spying on us?” Theo said in a dangerous voice.
Zacharias shot him an incredulous look over Harry’s shoulder. He was tense, though, and his pulse jumped at his throat. “D’you think I’m an idiot? Startle you while you’re practicing something like that? I like my head attached to my shoulders, thanks.”
Harry slowly stepped back and lowered his wand, although he didn’t put it away. “And where did you learn of a spell like that?”
“Learn, not learn of,” Zacharias corrected. “My grandfather taught me.”
“Prove it.” Harry prepared to cast protego just in case.
The slow way Zacharias moved to get out his wand proved he knew Harry and Theo were both ready and willing to curse him. Practicing that kind of magic could have gotten either of them expelled on the spot.
Zacharias aimed carefully away from the other boys. “Bombarda!” he cried.
The spell was not as powerful as Harry’s or Theo’s had been but it took a quaffle-sized bite out of the dusty stone wall of the corridor. Harry quickly raised a hand to shield himself against the stone chips–he really needed to find a shield for physical attacks.
Breathing a bit heavily, Zacharias lowered his wand and looked at them.
“Remind me never to piss off House Smith,” Theo said.
Zacharias grinned. “My grandfather never goes anywhere without his warhammer. It’s a family heirloom and was inspired by ancient tales of Thor’s Mjolnir. I grew up surrounded by battlemages.”
Battlemage. Harry had never heard the term before but he liked it. And here was a golden opportunity to bind the prickly Hufflepuff a little closer to him. “Would you like to practice with us sometimes?”
“I would be honored, Heir Potter.” Zacharias looked, in that moment, far too haughty and smug for a Hufflepuff.
Theo was still grinning as the three of them set off for the Great Hall and dinner. “Are you sure you were sorted right?”
“Please.” Zacharias looked so irritated that Harry had to fight off a smile of his own. “People forget that niceness isn’t actually a Hufflepuff trait. Loyalty, hard work, fairness, those I will uphold to my dying breath, as is the duty of a scion of my House. But niceness?” He sneered.
Harry lost the battle against a grin.
Raza poked at the leather cover of the largest and most mysterious book from Lily Potter’s large and extensive collection. “It smells… very old. And magical.”
“It’s not dragonhide?” Raza knew the scent of that well enough, from students’ boots and Harry’s mother’s old cloak he had taken to wearing.
“No. Nor the leather that landplodders use from those dull grass-eaters.”
“Cows.” Harry grinned at his familiar. “They’re called cows.”
Raza made a rude noise that expressed his opinion of dull grass-eaters and his willingness to care what landplodders named them. “I do not know what sort of beast it once was.”
“A mystery, then.” Harry ran his fingers lightly over the cover, which bore no identifying marks except for the word Magick embossed into the leather in silver. It tingled beneath his touch.
When he went to open the book, the tingling turned into a piercing shock. Harry would have yanked his hand away, but it was stuck. His throat closed up, his heart started to race–
The book released him and flipped open to the title page, perfectly docile once more. Raza hissed at it angrily, twisting on the bedspread in agitation.
Cautiously, Harry poked the page. Nothing happened, so he gingerly turned it, looking for a table of contents. There wasn’t one. The book actually appeared to be handwritten and it just started, point-blank, with an introduction from the author.
“Read it to me,” Raza said impatiently. “I want to know why your mother thought it so important.” He had developed a high esteem for Lily Potter since Snape’s revelations and seemed pleased that his wizard had a powerful and fearsome egg-mother.
Harry took a sip of water from the glass balancing on the footboard of his bed with a sticking charm and then replaced it. Spelling the curtains shut had the unfortunate side effect of cutting off his ability to reach his nightstand, so he’d had to get creative with the glass of water.
“All right. Let’s see…
“The ancient practises of Magick have of late been ever more relegated to the shadows. Having seen this occur before, with many types of magick once known and now lost, I have undertaken no less a task than to record and describe our practises, beliefs, and history before they are forever cast aside.”
“Well he thinks highly of himself,” Raza interrupted.
Harry snorted. “I can only hope that this tome will survive the purgings and witch-hunting that so threatens our nation, and that it one day finds its way into the hands of a modern wixen, to act as a connection back to the distant past.
“To you, O reader of the future, I entreat: do not cast my life’s work aside no matter the prejudices which may have arisen in the years since this was written. Read before you judge me. Within these pages you shall find as detailed an accounting as has ever been attempted of the magical practise and belief of the British Isles. I commence at its simplest, although certainly not its least powerful, levels: string magic, sympathetic magic, harvest-spells and charms one might dismiss as superstition. I pray you do not make such a foolish mistake. Therein lies the central tenet of magick as we understand it: collective belief holds immense power. If everyone in a particular region believes that knocking thrice upon a doorframe before crossing through will briefly empower the frame to strip them of negative energies and influences, it will in fact be so, as has been observed and documented in certain communities in Scottland.
“Collective belief gives spells their power. Its greatest achievement has been the very manifestation of Magick itself, those apparitions commonly termed gods.”
Harry had to pause. Gods? He’d thought the magical world didn’t really worship… but the collective belief idea, that made a lot of sense. A Charms class from before the holidays came to mind: Vihaan had mentioned an imprint, as though casting a spell enough times left a mark of some kind on magic itself. Although Vihaan had dismissed the idea. He probably wasn’t the most trustworthy source, though: Flitwick seemed to disagree with him a lot, and Harry was more inclined to trust the part-goblin than a professor so clearly beholden to the Ministry.
He continued: “The gods are not individual entities, deities, as such. They are aspects of Magick, embodied by collective belief in Magick’s power over one aspect of human existence. To use the Greco-Roman gods as an example, old texts frequently refer to their multitude of deities in the singular, as “the god”. None of them is complete in and of themselves, but taken as a whole, the Greco-Roman deities encompass the major, defining forces of our existence.
“Muggle interpretations of these deities have become increasingly flawed. Most recently, the rise of the monotheistic movement embodied by the Christians and, to the southeast, the Arabs and Jews is in some ways more accurate and in some ways less–it views the divine as a singular entity, God, or Yahweh, or Allah, incontrovertibly distant and other compared to the Muggles. We have no evidence nor indication of there being any such entity, divine or otherwise, outside of Magick, and as we are at present a scattered and disparate community, driven to fear and hiding by the hostility we face from our nonmagical brethren, no comprehensive study has as yet been made as to the relations between this new religious movement and the old. Personally, I believe the Muggles’ new conception of the divine as removed from the natural world is grounded, albeit unconsciously, in their lack of magic. We have always considered Magick to be inextricable from ourselves and from nature, something which suffuses all that we are and all that the world is. The Muggle variants on our religions of old reflect this; the Norse and Greco-Roman gods of the Muggles closely resemble our own conceptions of deities. They are of us and of the land. Without magick, however, Muggles cannot truly commune with the gods, as we can with aspects of Magick manifested by concentrated collective belief, wrought on the high days with ritual and sacrifice. They have taken this separation to mean that their God is somewhere else and that they must strive, by one means or another, to reach Him.
“I hope that it is by now superfluous for me to say how antithetical this religion is to the existence of wixen. We could not possibly worship magick, what Muggles call the divine, as though it were at a remove: we live with it every day. I mean no judgment upon the Muggles and their religion by this, only to say that their development and their new religion, tailored as it is to the differences between our experience and theirs, makes our worlds increasingly incompatible where once they were one. Already I see the insidious effects of the monotheistic influence upon our society: we have begun to cut ourselves off from the most powerful of our ancient practises, and the rhetoric behind this movement says that those things are too dangerous, too powerful, for us to weild: that they are feats which should belong to God alone. We voluntarily hobble ourselves so that we do not frighten the far more numerous Muggles and their kings and queens to whom we owe fealty. We cast aside the rich and powerful cultures of other magical species, the mer, the centaurs, the children of moon and of night, the sprite-tribes and veela and so many more, because the Muggles believe “humankind” to be the ruler of the world as ordained by their God, destined to rule over all others, as if we were humans first and wixen second.
“Our own deities have already begun to weaken. Once, at the Standing Stones on Salisbury Plain, we could invoke the embodiments of Magick on the high holy days, and Freyja, Demeter, Aphrodite, Thor, and the rest would walk among us. It was possible to beg of the gods a boon and it was our sacred duty to nourish the ancient force with the blood and energy we poured out in these rituals.
“With the deities, embodiment of Magick, it is no surprise that our spells and rituals weaken as well. The Bristol Floods of 1607 were caused by a ritual once used to call water for irrigating fields. It failed, killing the forty-nine participating wixen as well as more than two thousand local Muggles caught in the ensuing flood. The casters were experienced wixen who had worked this ritual before; never in recent centuries has it failed without catastrophic outside intervention. We can find no possible explanation for its collapse in this case beyond the simple fact that the magick of the world is not what it was.
“To the wixen reading my words, I hope that this warning does not ring of falsehood and fear-mongering. I write only what I believe with all my soul to be the truth. Political currents seem to indicate that the movement to forcibly, legally, and permanently erect a wall between our world and that of the Muggles; I hope that this separation will do us good, but I fear that it will merely create further tension. I do not know what the solution may be: I am a theorist and a historian, and ill-suited for the task of determining how to lead our people into the future. I know only that no leader can lead with ill information.
“May my work return my people to their true strength and heritage, so that our future can be brighter than our past.”
For a few minutes, Raza and Harry sat in silence, absorbing what they’d just read.
“Raza,” Harry said quietly, “I think we’re in trouble.”
-----
Draco Malfoy scowled at Potter’s closed curtains.
He’d tried many times before and he knew that there was no way to get past them. Somehow, Potter had learned some kind of ward that he, Draco Malfoy, could not break. It was infuriating. Draco was the last of one of Great Britain’s oldest and proudest pureblood Houses. He should have been more powerful than Potter, a halfblood of all things from a pathetic house with only a Lordship to its name.
Come to think of it, he should be more powerful than Granger, too. Draco scowled all the harder at the thought of the bushy-haired know-it-all Gryffindor. Sure, she was clever, but anyone could read a book: what really made him angry was the fact that she got spells before he did in almost every class. One of the older Gryffindors had to be helping her–tutoring her in the evenings, maybe even lending her their magic through some amulet or talisman, although Draco couldn’t imagine why someone would willingly give their magic to a mudblood. What if it didn’t give the magic back?
But back to the Potter problem.
No one was helping him, Draco was sure of it. He would have found out by now if one of the older Slytherins was helping the prat. There’d been some rumors of him allying with Deirdre Rookwood–and wasn’t that an embarrassment, two noble Houses on her shoulders and she consorted with the likes of Potter–but then it had turned out she’d just been asking a favor of some potion or other. Where Potter was acquiring all those potions and books and whatever else he supplied to the older students, Draco didn’t know, but it was just adding insult to injury. He couldn’t have gotten his hands on Dreamless Sleep that easily. And then there was the way so many pureblood Heirs from respectable families rotated in his orbit. Longbottom was no surprise, he was a pathetic little loser of a Hufflepuff, but still, he was the heir of a very old noble family. Smith’s friendship with Potter was a bit more irritating but the way Nott and now Rowle followed him around was disgusting. And Pansy had been spending more time with Daphne than with Draco lately, and Draco had seen the way she looked at Potter. It turned his stomach.
Personally, Draco thought the whole duel last year with Bulstrode had been for show. Wandless magic, at eleven–yeah, right. Someone had interfered, or more likely Bulstrode’s spell had backfired on her, which served her right for trying magic that Dark when she was so young.
So no, Potter didn’t scare him. Draco was just–cautious. Strange things happened around Potter. If Draco wanted to knock that cool look off his face and take the top spot in Slytherin by next year, when their power plays would start to matter, then he would have to do something, and soon.
-----
The hapless student chosen to get Luna and Graves into the hospital wing was Cedric Diggory. After all the stories Harry had heard from Neville and Zacharias about Diggory’s condescending attitude and smarmy ways, he had developed a bit of a grudge against the older boy. Diggory was rarely alone but they managed to catch him returning late to his common room from the library.
Harry aimed his wand carefully, and whispered a simple trip jinx. Diggory let out a yell as he suddenly tripped and hurtled down the stairs, books going flying. They’d decided a fall on the stairs was the simplest idea, and this was a public enough part of the castle that it wouldn’t be weird for a few younger students to come across Diggory here. Harry had insisted that Graves wait behind: the professors were too suspicious of him. Instead, he’d roped Portia into helping, to which she had agreed with a put-upon sigh.
They waited, listening to Diggory’s pained moans and gasping cries for help. Harry, used to people being in pain, ignored him easily, but he was surprised that neither Portia nor Luna seemed very affected.
Three minutes passed. Harry nodded at the girls. They retreated up the hallway, and then waited until the faint echo of Diggory’s next call for help reached their ears to start running.
“Merlin!” Portia said, eyes wide, when they got to the top of the stairs and saw Diggory. Harry privately agreed: he looked more… broken than Harry had expected, with bends in both legs that weren’t supposed to be there and a bleeding cut on his head.
“Oh thank Merlin,” Diggory gasped, pain twisting his face.
“Shit. Um… Wingardium leviosa,” Harry said, flicking his wand through the familiar movements. Diggory let out a cry as the spell lifted him off the stone floor. Harry arranged his expression into one of urgency and concern. “Let’s get you to the hospital wing,” he said, moving Diggory as gently as he could.
By the time they got to the hospital wing, Harry was very glad of all the extra training he’d been doing. The strain of carrying something that large while navigating stairs and doorways left him sweating and tired. He didn’t think he’d have managed it even a few months ago.
Pomfrey came out of her office within seconds of them walking into the wing. “What’s–oh dear Merlin, the poor boy, what happened?”
“It looked like he fell on the stairs, Madam Pomfrey,” Portia said, the picture of innocence.
“Well. Mr. Potter, excellent use of the levitation charm, twenty points to Slytherin, but I’ll take over now.” Madam Pomfrey raised her wand and nodded to Harry, who let his own spell lapse with no little relief. Diggory didn’t fall; instead, Pomfrey expertly transferred him to a gurney and closed the curtains around her with another brisk flick of her wand. They heard her begin to mutter spells instantly.
Harry turned around: Luna had already disappeared towards the back of the wing, where several curtained beds contained the comatose students. As he watched, she slipped out of the second and moved on to the third, glass glinting in her left hand and wand held in her right.
Portia glanced anxiously between Luna and Diggory’s bed. “Harry…”
“It’ll be fine,” Harry said in an undertone.
Luna slipped into the curtains around the fourth bed.
Rustling came from Diggory’s bed, and Pomfrey emerged. She seemed surprised to see them still there. Harry quickly asked, “Will he be all right, Madam Pomfrey?” with wide eyes and a slightly wobbling lower lip.
She softened instantly. “Yes, of course. He’s perfectly stable, but I will need assistance from Severus, if you could be so kind as to notify him of this when you return to your common room?”
“Of course,” Harry agreed readily enough.
“I’m so glad you were able to help so easily, Madam Pomfrey,” Portia added with a bright smile. “We were ever so worried…”
“Nonsense, I’ve patched up much worse,” Pomfrey said, but she looked pleased nonetheless.
Behind her, Luna emerged from the last bed, sidling towards the door.
“We’d better go, then,” Harry said, tugging Portia’s arm. “So we’re not in the way… thank you!” he called over his shoulder, and they managed to bustle Luna along with them on their way out the door.
“Close,” Portia commented.
Harry shrugged. “It was all right. Got what you needed, Luna?”
In answer, the airy blonde held up four vials of blood that shone almost as much as her smile.
***
After a lot of thought, and several heated discussions with Raza, Harry decided to share Magick with Theo. He waited a few days to casually remark that he was tired and might turn in early, while tossing Theo a significant look. Theo followed him without protest. The rest of the Slytherin second years were too busy stressing about a four-foot essay for McGonagall on the differences between transfiguring inanimate and animate matter to care about House politics or Harry and Theo’s sudden absence.
When they got back to their dorm, Theo said nothing, just looked at Harry with one eyebrow raised expectantly. Harry levitated his mother’s trunk onto his bed and gestured for Theo to follow.
They scrambled up and Harry closed the curtains with a swish of his wand. He cast the few wards he had painstakingly looked up and taught himself to keep their conversation private and uninterrupted.
“I want to show you something of my mother’s,” he said without preamble.
“Oh.” Theo looked solemn.
Harry opened the trunk to the library compartment, taking a deep breath before he slid Magick out of the top shelf and handed it to Theo.
His first friend took the book with a look of confusion and dawning awe. “Harry, this… is this what I think it is?”
“Well, I don’t know what you think it is,” Harry said, “but I get the sense it’s very old and probably illegal.”
“Illegal? It’s a life sentence in Azkaban to even own this.” Theo did not look at all inclined to put the book down. “Where did Lily bloody Potter even fucking get this?”
“She was supposed to be a Slytherin,” Harry pointed out.
“Okay but still. She was a muggleborn–don’t look at me like that, okay, do you know what this is?” Theo said urgently.
Harry shook his head.
“It was written sometime before the Statute of Secrecy was voted in. It’s supposedly the last uncensored major work of history published before the Ministry started controlling everything anybody wrote. There’s only like… maybe two dozen copies in existence. My father has been trying for as long as I can remember to get a copy. We don’t have one. Do you see why I was shocked that a muggleborn could pull it off when the best connections money and old names can buy haven’t done it?”
“Point taken. Where are the other copies?” Harry said interestedly. “And how were they made if the copying spell only makes limited copies?”
“Someone had to handwrite the bloody thing out for every copy of the original because the author somehow spelled it to resist magical copying, and then after that the Ministry wouldn’t let anyone print or own or sell it or anything, so it never got set into type.”
“Merlin,” Harry said. It was a thick book. His writing hand cramped in sympathy.
Theo looked at him. “If you would allow my father to borrow this at some point, I would be honored, and House Nott would be in your debt.”
It was a formal request, made in a formal tone, and Harry felt a very faint swirl of magic settle around him as he said “It would be my pleasure. Perhaps this summer, after I’ve had a chance to read it myself?” and Theo nodded.
“Read the introduction,” Harry said. “I haven’t started on the first chapter yet–” he’d been poring over dusty archives looking for possible references to a study or office or something related to Salazar Slytherin where this mysterious Chamber might connect– “but the introduction is telling in itself.”
Theo nodded, and cracked it to the first page with reverent hands.
While he read, Harry opened one of the potioncrafting books and started taking notes on the chapter about improving shelf life. He frequently consulted the massive compendium of interactions tables for reference: there were just so many possibilities, and so many things to consider. It would have exhausted him if he hadn’t loved puzzles–and been intrigued by the doors that being a skilled potioner would open for him.
It took Theo just a few minutes to finish the introduction. He set the book down and looked pretty much exactly as Harry had felt when he first read it: a mix of stunned, horrified, and fascinated. Harry nodded.
“That’s… horrifying,” Theo breathed.
“It is. And we’re not taught any of this.”
“Is it real?” Theo demanded. “The weakening magic, the… gods? I mean I’ve heard of the gods of old, we used to honor the Celtic deities in my family, but… I thought it was just, you know, a thing that fell out of fashion. If they were real…”
“Well, magic is real. Can’t you feel it sometimes?”
Theo frowned. “I guess, yeah… at Hogwarts, and some of the old manor homes. Magic sensing is a bit of a tricky thing to learn, though. You can?”
Nodding slowly, Harry shifted so Raza would get off his left foot, which had fallen asleep. The snake grumbled but shifted to doze on a pillow instead.
“Huh” was Theo’s only comment. “This, though. It’s… we need to do something about this, or… we’ll lose everything.”
“Yeah,” Harry said softly.
Theo stared at the book for a second. “Do you ever think… we’re kids. We probably shouldn’t be thinking about these things. We should be, I don’t know, stressing about… grades and girls and… mean professors, not… the potential end of our entire world.”
“Neither of us has had a chance to be a kid in a long time,” Harry said.
“True.” Theo reached out for his hand without looking up; Harry reached back and let their fingers intertwine. “And if we don’t, who will? Not the adults, clearly.”
“Maybe some of them.” In general, though, Harry agreed. He could probably count on… Snape, perhaps, in this at least. And Larkin and Theo’s father, maybe the Smiths too based on what Zacharias had said about his family.
It set off a bit of a fire in Harry’s gut, though. He’d loved magic since he was a toddler with the desperation of someone who had almost nothing to call his own. It had protected him, healed him, and it had led him into a world of wonder and possibilities where he belonged. He wasn’t a freak here. Wasn’t evil, or possessed. Here Harry was powerful and had a chance to earn everything he’d ever wanted. And he’d been learning, in bits and pieces, of lots of things that he didn’t think were right about this world. Wixen weren’t perfect, and magic didn’t fix all your problems. That was clear. But there were some problems it could fix if only people weren’t so stupid.
And he wanted to be the one to fix them.
“Is it arrogant or stupid to think I can run things better someday than they are now?” he said quietly. Outside of this safe haven, in front of any other ears, he would never have revealed the insecurity. But Theo had revealed his own weakness just a few breaths before.
“No,” Theo said, meeting Harry’s eyes with a gaze that nearly burned. “No. Not at all. Riddle was… we need change, and Riddle… the pressure had to go somewhere. It just went in a bad direction.”
The magnitude of this scared Harry slightly. Not that he would admit that directly. It was all he’d ever wanted and dreamed. He knew he could do it, deserved it even, but still… some part of him laughed at the idea of two twelve-year-olds promising in a dorm room that they were going to take over the country someday.
Then again, Riddle had done basically the same thing, and look what he’d done. Maybe he was insane, maybe the violence had been terrible, but no one would ever forget him. He’d set out to change things and had he ever followed through.
Harry couldn’t convince himself he was any less capable than Riddle had been.
A small smile crawled across his face. It felt… good to have a direction, something to pursue besides just some abstract desire for success and power. Success for its own sake was all well and good as a goal, but how many people could honestly say they’d set out to save the world?
“It’ll be a lot of work,” he said. “Research, plans, connections. The whole political momentum is against us.”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Theo said. “Boy-Who-Lived, the Savior, the Slytherin. And, well, Riddle seems to have been incapable of things like trust and forming alliances. He was just a dictator.”
“I don’t feel things normally,” Harry reminded him.
Theo looked away. “I know, Harry, but… you care in your way. It might not be normal but that doesn’t make it any less sincere.”
And there was a point there, even if Harry didn’t want to admit it. So long without attachments of any kind, and he’d convinced himself he didn’t need them, that people were a weakness. But here was Theo. It wasn’t a weakness to want to protect him and keep him close. It was a strength, because Theo would watch his back in turn.
***
“Mr. Potter, a word?”
Harry checked his stride and looked up: the Muggle Studies professor stood there with an unreadable expression.
Suppressing the sudden anxiety in his gut, Harry waved Theo and Blaise along. “Yes, Professor?”
“Would you join me in my office a moment?”
“I have to get to Charms,” Harry said.
“This will just be a moment.”
Unable to really refuse, Harry followed him to his office. “Tea?”
“Thank you, sir,” Harry said. A cup of Earl Grey was promptly procured and offered him; he held it but didn’t drink.
Professor White settled in his chair on the other side of the wide desk. The whole office was surprisingly Muggle: there were plastic desk organizers, the desk itself was clearly machine-made, and his rolling desk chair was clearly a Muggle design. The chairs in front of the desk were of the plain plastic kind that often appeared in Muggle public schools. Harry, used to the wizarding world being wholly separate from the Muggle one, found himself extremely uncomfortable.
“I was hoping to speak with you about a… well, an unusual request,” Professor White said. “Would it be accurate, Mr. Potter, to presume that you have some experience with the Muggle world?”
“Some,” Harry said as smoothly as he could manage. This whole situation felt about as stable as his broom during a thunderstorm. And how had White known that?
White stirred sugar into his tea. “You see, I’ve been hoping to introduce Muggle religion to a wider cross-section of Hogwarts students. Frankly, you’re the only Slytherin among the youngest few years who I thought might be willing and able to help in this project.”
“I don’t know how much help I’d be, Professor,” Harry said tightly. “I don’t have a lot of experience with Muggle religion.” Not positive experience, anyway.
“Mmm.” White’s face was impassive. A twisting feeling sunk its claws into Harry’s stomach. He could normally read people better than this but he had no idea how to charm White. And the professor still felt eerily, bizarrely, familiar.
“Nevertheless, I’d like to start a club of sorts to educate more wizarding children about the religion of their Muggle peers,” White continued. “Would you be willing to help me garner some interest from the younger students in your House?”
Pasting an innocent look on his face, Harry asked, “Which religions, sir? Don’t Muggles have several?”
White shrugged. “They do, but Christianity is the dominant religion in most of the English-speaking world. I thought to focus on that.”
Something about his pale knuckles and the shifty way he looked around made Harry think he was lying. Or holding something back.
“Well, I wouldn’t be much help. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I only have one real Slytherin friend.”
“Indeed? You seem quite close with Mr. Zabini, if I am not mistaken.”
“Sort of. Mostly we study together. He’s quite good at charms and I help him with Potions,” Harry said. Not quite true but all White needed to hear right now.
“Still, think it over. You may be surprised how… useful such a club could be.”
Harry managed to escape with a few empty promises that he’d think it over. A cold feeling had taken over his fingers and it followed him all the way to Charms.
A few weeks ago, that talk would’ve unsettled him, but mostly because Harry just hadn’t had a good experience with Muggle religion as a kid. After what he’d read in Magick, though, it was downright frightening. Harry wasn’t one to take any book at face value but everything else he’d read about history confirmed its major premise. It couldn’t just be coincidence that there were fewer and fewer mentions of major rituals and magical holidays of any kind as history books got more recent. Even the newer editions of some books—notably, Hogwarts, A History—had cut out lots of information.
Vihaan noticed his distraction and took fifteen points off Slytherin. Harry’s mood went from bad to foul and he was ready to hex someone by the time they got back to the common room and Malfoy started ranting about Granger the mudblood and her uppity behavior and didn’t she know her place?
Harry’s face tightened, and Malfoy’s voice stopped working.
Only Theo and Blaise were sitting with him; only they realized he’d been the reason Malfoy suddenly made no sound. The blond prat was sitting several clusters away with his court of pureblood cronies from second and third year, all of whom were now laughing.
Everyone near them started looking, so Harry turned as well. He was just one of the other Slytherins, wondering what was causing so much noise. Nothing suspicious about him.
Beet red with fury and humiliation, Malfoy stood, yelling soundlessly. A third year, Taryn Jugson, pulled her wand and cast what looked like a finite but nothing happened, which only made the laughter worse.
Malfoy looked around and happened to catch Harry’s eye.
Mockingly, Harry grinned, and held up a two-finger salute.
The blond’s eyes narrowed. He turned around and stormed off toward the dorms.
“You play with fire,” Blaise said quietly.
Harry didn’t look away from Malfoy’s retreating back. “I know.”
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